_________________"With every decision, think seven generations ahead of the consequences of your actions" Ute rule of life.“We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children”― Chief Seattle“Those Who Have the Privilege to Know Have the Duty to Act”…Albert Einstein

Earthship Design Principles1) Thermal/Solar Heating & Cooling(or geothermal, all with thermal mass)2) Solar & Wind Electricity(or other non-emissions power)3) Contained Sewage Treatment(septic system or community septic, both with composting)4) Building with Natural &Recycled Materials (along with super insulation)5) Water Harvesting (rainwater and recycling systems)6) Food Production (inside and outside gardens, aquaculture, and small animal husbandry)

Along with these, it is a given that each building has a stable amount of people, staying within the range of its support mechanisms.Rainfall change is something that affects this amount. The passive solar is affected by prolonged cloudiness, and backup systems by local and outside resources.

_________________"With every decision, think seven generations ahead of the consequences of your actions" Ute rule of life.“We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children”― Chief Seattle“Those Who Have the Privilege to Know Have the Duty to Act”…Albert Einstein

Along with these, it is a given that each building has a stable amount of people, staying within the range of its support mechanisms.Rainfall change is something that affects this amount. The passive solar is affected by prolonged cloudiness, and backup systems by local and outside resources.

My only problem with high-mass buildings is they are difficult to make in a typical city lot. Of course it would be ideal if we could just start over and make new cities designed for solar but that is not going to happen. The second issue with high mass is only how much mass is needed based on the level of insulation used. In places where there is a high difference in daily highs and lows but minimal difference between average temperature and desired room temperatures, high mass is the ultimate answer (and is dirt cheap using tired old garbage for a couple of puns). A bit further to the North, we have John Hiat's "Passive Annual Heat Storage" in Montana and Amory Lovin's "banana farms" in Colorado mountains. These designs use a bit more insulation and a bit less use of high mass walls. They needed more insulation to deal with a low average temperature in their area and thus had less need for thermal mass. "Passive annual heat storage" method has been shown effective in Alaska but the land mass needed was bigger then a city block that required buried foam insulation. This is even less practical in a city. I hope to solve that problem and I will explain using your list of design principles but listed in a different order for ease of explaining the thought process6) Food ProductionA city lot is rather small and generally the front yard is not available for any above-ground use so the entire back yard needs to be greenhouse as a given.4) Building with Natural & Recycled MaterialsThe primary garbage in a converted city will be these old inefficient buildings. Building upgrades has to be the first line of action. There are many forms of insulation made with recycled materials (paper, glass, cotton fabric) and others with low embodied energy made with abundant or renewable materials (like volcanic rock and soybeans).5) Water HarvestingThe biggest problems with cities is the rain runoff... I will catch it all and store it and use it. Eaves and cisterns were common practice only a few decades ago... my house is about 100 years old and had a very large cistern that was cemented over about 45 years ago (date on the cement patch) Adding a greenhouse gives more rain-catching surface. Under the unused front yard, large water storage tanks can be buried (look at the designs that use what looks like milk product delivery square plastic things to provide a square shape and strength to hold up enough dirt above it to get beyond the frost line).3) Contained Sewage TreatmentComposting toilets that do not use water are commercially available and have be been for used for decades now for testing and long warranties. Grey water reusage is a bit trickier due to safety regulations but I think shower water can be reused for showers then used up by cloths washing with high efficiency washing machines and that waste water sent to the greenhouse for filtering and use. Sink water (drinking, hand washing, washing dishes) can be a primary water usage with a purification system or if I am forced to, use city treated water... but that is a small portion of the water and still within the scope of using all the waste water on the greenhouse.1) Thermal/Solar Heating & CoolingThis is where the insulation and air-tightness is so high that the building is heated by body heat. Some solar thermal will be used for hot water but much of the hot water used for showers will be retained by the reuse of that water for showers. This leaves more of the limited roof space for concentrating solar for stored high heat used for cooking and powering refrigeration and for PV2) Solar & Wind ElectricityWind power is not as applicable within a city but roof-peak wind energy gathering turbines have been invented that might be visually acceptable and be used for pumping and electricity. PV will be used to provide lights, alarms, and thermal solar controls and pumps but purchased electricity might still be financially prudent for heating backup and high power items while the building is already hooked to power lines. Of course the goal of independence will provide the push to go 100% PV for electricity as long as the thermal solar needs are covered. Note that cooking and refrigeration energy was covered by solar thermal methods above.

This is why PassivHaus building standards are popular in Germany and other parts of northern Europe and required on new buildings in many countries now... high insulation can eliminate 90% or more of the heating and cooling needs of a typical building leaving the remaining 10% to come from waste heat from solar hot water and heat created by the electronics and lighting that is powered by the PV.

This guy inspired me to look at creating subdivisions in cities (to utilize public transportation) and that is when I realized that getting access to unused land near or in cities was totally impossible for 99.9% of the population. What could be done easily though was to purchase a beat-up old house with a bad furnace and create new cities one building at a time

This guy inspired me to look at creating subdivisions in cities (to utilize public transportation) and that is when I realized that getting access to unused land near or in cities was totally impossible for 99.9% of the population. What could be done easily though was to purchase a beat-up old house with a bad furnace and create new cities one building at a time

One problem about cities and solar is the amount of shading from other buildings. There is a section at the earthship site on retrofitting buildings, but you need more room to do it. Basically adding thermal mass, insulation, and tilted glass walls to heat a greenhouse area.In colder climates, rolling insulated shutters help with night heat loss.Higher latitude or altitude earthships need to have more solar thermal gain glass per square foot, more of the thermal mass "finger walls"(interior sun line colored free standing tire walls) and insulation between the underground and the tire walls.Waste straw in well made non-round bales is a great eco-insulator, but needs protection from moisture rot. Another problem with cities is roof area per person---it isn't enough for catchment with tall buildings. Also not enough area to grow food. The unfortunate reality is that cities themselves are unsustainable.Design Principles1) Thermal/Solar Heating & Cooling(or geothermal, all with thermal mass)2) Solar & Wind Electricity(or other non-emissions power)3) Contained Sewage Treatment(septic system or community septic, both with composting)4) Building with Natural &Recycled Materials (along with super insulation)5) Water Harvesting (rainwater and recycling systems)6) Food Production (inside and outside gardens, aquaculture, and small animal husbandry)

_________________"With every decision, think seven generations ahead of the consequences of your actions" Ute rule of life.“We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children”― Chief Seattle“Those Who Have the Privilege to Know Have the Duty to Act”…Albert Einstein

One problem about cities and solar is the amount of shading from other buildings. There is a section at the earthship site on retrofitting buildings, but you need more room to do it. Basically adding thermal mass, insulation, and tilted glass walls to heat a greenhouse area.In colder climates, rolling insulated shutters help with night heat loss.Higher latitude or altitude earthships need to have more solar thermal gain glass per square foot, more of the thermal mass "finger walls"(interior sun line colored free standing tire walls) and insulation between the underground and the tire walls.Waste straw in well made non-round bales is a great eco-insulator, but needs protection from moisture rot. Another problem with cities is roof area per person---it isn't enough for catchment with tall buildings. Also not enough area to grow food. The unfortunate reality is that cities themselves are unsustainable.Design Principles1) Thermal/Solar Heating & Cooling(or geothermal, all with thermal mass)2) Solar & Wind Electricity(or other non-emissions power)3) Contained Sewage Treatment(septic system or community septic, both with composting)4) Building with Natural &Recycled Materials (along with super insulation)5) Water Harvesting (rainwater and recycling systems)6) Food Production (inside and outside gardens, aquaculture, and small animal husbandry)

I will just clarify some differences that apply to northern climates like where I live. Solar shading is a very big problem especially in cities and in February. This is why solar is not good enough BUT if you reduce the energy needs of the house to 1/10, you need 1/10 the solar gain so only getting a handful of hours of low-quality sun (cloudy days) might still be well above the 1/10 the amount of sun in a building with lots of south exposure. This also eliminates windows for all use other then lighting and personal enjoyment of the view... no passive solar needed (although it is welcome if available). Triple and higher pane windows with noble gas fill become cost effective due to less efficient windows requiring much thicker insulation to compensate. Windows are small and few as a general rule in a passivhaus design (as opposed to "passive solar" with lots of south windows). With all that insulation, the temperature of the house stays steady no matter what the outside temperature is so the thermal mass is no longer needed for temperature stability. Instead I am proposing to store heat for cooking and for powering absorption-style refrigeration under the basement of the house (insulated of course) and the waste heat and loss through the insulation will add to the heating of the house. This will be gathered with solar-tracking concentrated solar thermal collectors. The idea of a year-round greenhouse is less practical in the far north due to the heat loss of the windows. With only 5 months of frost-free weather though, a greenhouse can double that then leave the greenhouse unused for 2-3 months of the winter. For this reason and for humidity control, the greenhouse should be kept separate from the house. "Earth tubes" and similar heat exchanger methods can still be employed to make use of the buffered greenhouse air (and help stabilize the greenhouse temperatures). Some alternate greenhouse designs will also be explored that minimize thermal loss by minimizing window size through the use of concentrating solar (but that is a whole bunch of threads worth of ideas to detail). Note that I now classify air-tightness and insulation as a form of "thermal mass" in that it is helping hold the heat that is stored in that thermal mass. This makes a smaller thermal mass do the same job as a bigger thermal mass without that insulation.